Adult Movie Lawyer Lost the Appeal

An attorney working on behalf of a porn studio, which was using the legal system to squeeze cash out of BitTorrent file-sharers, has finally lost the appeal against sanctions. Mick Haig Productions believed that it was onto a nice little earner when filing 670 John Doe complaints against uses of P2P networks.

The adult movie company had a cunning plan of suing anonymous file-sharers for allegedly downloading adult content illegally in order to use the powers of the court to disclose their identity. After this the company was going to shame or intimidate the users into settling for thousands of dollars.

Despite the fact that this tactic had been used in other legal cases, it seems to be fast running out of steam, especially in the cases where adult movies are involved. The lower courts felt that the legal process wasn’t serving the interests of justice. The matter is that even if the defendants were innocent they were more likely to pay the amount the adult moviemaker asked for instead of facing the embarrassment of going to court.

After the lower court sanctioned Mick Haig’s attorney for such behavior, he appealed, but today these sanctions received affirmation of 5th Circuit.

The Recording Industry versus the People claimed that the appeals court deplored the movie studio’s strategy of suing anonymous file-sharers for allegedly downloading adult content illegally through the powers of the court to reveal their identity. As it was said above, the plaintiffs then prefer to shame or intimidate file-sharers into settling for bunch of cash.

Now it looks like the porn industry will have to come up with another plan to target illegal file-sharers.

Porn Studios Accused of Fraud

Several porn producers were recently accused of fraud, defamation and racketeering in their copyright cases against P2P users. In fact, their strategy was quite simple and effective. Once they receive the IP addresses related to the illegal download of copyrighted content, the studios sue with the hope that the judge will force the Internet service provider to disclose a name and address of the IP owners, and sometimes it works.

That’s where the shakedown starts. Nevertheless, the real problem is that the studios don’t really seek litigation, but rather aim for settlements of $1000 to $5000. Often the defendants prefer to pay this money to avoid the embarrassment of being accused of downloading porno, let alone their fear of the Copyright Act provision saying that the infringers are eligible to pay up to $150.000 in damages for a single case of violation.

Last week a federal judge decided that a BitTorrent lawsuit launched by Malibu Media is “an extortion scheme”. As a result, the wheel turned and now there’s another lawsuit – this time against the porn studio. The new lawsuit, which can represent 200,000 people, says that the adult studios realize that this amount of cash is less than the cost of defense would be if the lawsuit were filed. In addition, they understand that people like the plaintiff in this matter will be embarrassed to have their names associated with porn, and are susceptible to being shaken down.

Actually, if people could be proven to have downloaded the adult content unlawfully from the web, the porn purveyors could collect civil statutory damages of $150,000 for a willful violation such as they allege, yet they settle for $1,000-$5,000. The lawyers defending hundreds of people accused of downloading porn movies confirm that there’s a slime element associated with the adult movie cases, making it much more apparent than the music cases.

The lawsuit against adult studios was filed on behalf of a Kentucky woman Jennifer Barker. The latter was allegedly contacted by a representative of Intellectual Property Protection, an employee of the adult movie companies involved in the lawsuit, and asked to settle for supposedly downloading the content Malibu Media owns copyright to. The woman claims innocence. The movie studio demanded that Ms. Barker pay to settle or she would be identified publicly as having downloaded porn and become subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars as a penalty for copyright infringement.

FBI Will Leak False Papers.. BE COOL ;)

Julian Assange seems to face another problem with his whistleblowing service: the Feds still want to stop WikiLeaks operations with black ops. That’s why the FBI has hit upon a wizard wheeze to stuff up the whistleblowing site.

Local press reported that the FBI is currently seeding boobytrapped files with false data, trying to become able to track a paper trail from the leaker to the published source. Previously, the Pentagon-sponsored researchers found out that they could track the leakers by seeing how they search. After this discovery, they pushed towards decoy papers which would give them away.

The project has come out of the brains at DARPA and received a name “Fog Computing”. The developers explained that they had created a prototype for automatically generating and distributing believable misinformation. The prototype in question could also track access and attempted misuse of the false data. The Feds called this approach “disinformation technology”.

The problem with this otherwise perfect plan is that this method is the same as the spammers use. As a result, they can wind up undermining trust among the spooks. However, the American military thinks that it should be doing something to stop citizens leaking secrets that show the United States is doing things attributed to autocratic dictatorships only.

Despite the fact that many people accept that whistle blowing is a method used to keep companies clean, the government of the United States still believes that its more dubious antics should be kept out of public view. We’ll how this project will work and what the results will be.

Hollywood Puppets Keep Fighting for SOPA

US Republican senator Lamar Smith is trying to get the worst part of the rejected SOPA bill back on the statute books.

The senator is so concerned that the entertainment industry was spending too much cash running around threatening foreign countries to bring in tough new copyright legislation that he wanted the American taxpayers fund their work. He seems to believe that Hollywood is broke, while the American government had pots of cash it has no idea what to do with. Lamar Smith’s plan was to pay for civil servants to rush around the globe with MPAA and RIAA leaflets and threaten the governments which fail to comply with “repercussions”.

While the Motion Picture Association of America and its music fellow, RIAA, might be ignored by the tiny governments, the fact that it would be employees of the American government (very famous for invading other countries with high tech weapons and nukes if they don’t like something) hired as the servants is more likely to get attention.

According to media reports, the diplomatic corp is going to call them “IP attaches”, and the servants would have diplomatic status. The weird thing is that Smith is a Republican, who is too worried about smaller government and taxation, both of which are affected by the daft idea in question. Anyway, a sane politician would think that if the entertainment industry wanted to lobby countries, it should pay for that and do that itself.

Fortunately for normal people, the idea in question was rejected by many politicians, and even Smith’s fellow Republicans, who saw the writing on the wall for SOPA. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped the senator from getting all wiggy with it and trying to bring the idea back, and even bigger and “better” than before.

Lamar Smith has suggested legislation called the Intellectual Property Attache Act. The proposed bill is currently being fast tracked with the hope that nobody will notice it. Apparently, no-one is expected to inconvenience Smith with any anti-SOPA protest.

The suggested legislation offers to create those tax payer funded “diplomats” and attach them to the American Patent and Trademark Office, while setting them up as their own agency. Nothing seems to be able to go wrong with that.

ACTA is Rejected

And once again – great news for the Europeans! After all, the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was officially rejected by the EU Parliament.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade agreement has widely been regarded as a legislation which would defend copyright owners but at the expense of public interest, privacy, and civil liberties. That’s why there was no surprise that outfits like the Pirate Party of the United Kingdom were considering the ACTA’s failure a victory for the others, while entertainment industry-resistant outfits celebrated the day. EU Parliament had to use the Lisbon Treaty, for the very first time, to reject ACTA. The result of the vote was amazing: 478 members voted against, 39 in favor, 165 abstained.

However, the lobbying isn’t over. The matter is that the nuances of ACTA may appear under new names, and that the EU Commission claimed that it will try to push the agreement through regardless.

According to the EU Parliament spokesperson, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is, most definitely, dead. But the ACTA rapporteur has underlined the need for an alternative way to protect the intellectual property at international level. In other words, we can expect a different proposal in this field soon. The spokesperson pointed out that under the treaties, only the EU Commission has the right of legislative initiative – it means that only it can draft and formally propose legislation.

Of course, overturning the controversial treaty should be considered a small victory, because it took the weight of the Internet to publicize until public opinion over weighed the proposals supporting ACTA.

The British Pirate Party believes that it’s time for the EU Commission to accept mistakes in pushing ACTA and listen to the citizens of Europe. The Party points out that any legislation intended to protect intellectual property should balance the interests of copyright owners and the public. In addition, it is supposed to drive innovation and creativity. This doesn’t just mean providing restrictions on use, imposing penalties or privacy busting measures to curb the sharing of culture. First of all, a lot of people realize that copyright infringement and counterfeiting aren’t the same thing. Secondly, it needs to be consulted on openly and achieve public consent.

Music Industry Planned Massive File-Sharing Shutdowns

After major Internet service providers of the United Kingdom blocked The Pirate Bay under the court order, music labels of the BPI are going to target some other major torrent websites – for instance, H33T, Demonoid, TorrentReactor, and even us.

After the UK regulator (Ofcom) published the Initial Obligations Code for the Digital Economy Act (DEA), the country’s government promised to remove two arguable sections from the bill. According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, sections 17 and 18 will be removed from the DEA. Both of these provisions emphasized that online services providing access to copyrighted content were to be blocked by Internet service providers.

Apparently, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport realized that these two sections aren’t needed because infringing services can be blocked under the existing law. The best example is well known by everyone who has ever heard of Newzbin2, a Usenet indexing site, and how it was blocked by the British broadband providers.

Music licensing group PPL has sent a letter to its members, saying that not only The Pirate Bay is under their scope, but also other similar BitTorrent services exist that provide facilities through which the web users are able to illegally download copyrighted content and illegally make it available to other online users. The list of such services includes TorrentReactor, Demonoid, Fenopy, Kickass Torrents, H33T, and our Extratorrent as well, of course.

In addition, the PPL recommended that online services that provide legitimate content should contact the BPI’s legal team as soon as possible.

Do you know who Kim Dotcom is?!?

Today a lot of people know who Kim Dotcom is and what followed after American government decided to close down his website and company named MegaUpload. Now Kim Dotcom can say for sure who ordered the demise of MegaUpload.

The founder of MegaUpload admits that he understands who exactly decided to close him down – it was Vice President Joe Biden. The latter appeared to be a close friend with ex-senator Chris Dodd. This person needs no introduction, we guess. Dotcom claims that he knows from a credible source that it was Joe Biden who ordered his lawyer and now state attorney Neil MacBride to shut the cyberlocker down.

In addition, Kim knows that the case was debated a year ago at a White House meeting, which hosted a number of very important figures, including Rich Ross, Michael O’Leary, Brad Grey, Chris Dodd, and Barry Meyer. After this information from an insider was received, they scanned the White House visitor logs for all meetings of Chris Dodd, the head of the MPAA, and studio executives with Joe Biden and Obama, which are publicly available on the White House official site.

An interesting fact was revealed: a man named Mike Ellis of MPA Asia, an extradition expert and ex-superintendent of the Hong Kong police, also met with Chris Dodd, all studio executives and Joe Biden, and later met with the Minister of Justice Simon Power in New Zealand.

We’ll see how and when Dotcom will use this information. Right now he seems to be having a good time with friends, but fun time isn’t his prime concern. In July, his lawyers have to face a Virginia judge in order to have the MegaUpload case dismissed. A paper published on his lawyers’ site says that they will discuss the problems of indictments, among others. The experts believe that they may win, because last week a High Court judge said that New Zealand police used a faulty warrant, which voids the whole case.

Kim Dotcom gains a lot of popularity, admitting that the people of New Zealand have made him feel very welcome, because they realize he has been treated unfairly. The people understand that the New Zealand leadership could do everything to please the US.

By the way, Kim Dotcom donated $50.000 to John Banks during his 2010 campaign for mayor of Auckland. Despite the fact he failed to acquire the position, John Banks called Kim to thank him personally.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for the source of the article

Declaration of Internet Freedom

A few days ago, online leaders, including the EFF, Public Knowledge, Free Press, and the Mozilla Foundation, have issued a document titled “Declaration of Internet Freedom”.
The declaration stands for a free and open web and calls not to censor the Internet. Although the document doesn’t propose any specific policy, it hopes to put a line in the sand about what things should look like. Meanwhile, its principles were designed to be accepted by the political arena.The document was mainly sustained by liberal groups like the Free Press, but the declaration was also supported by a couple political figures, who encouraged Republicans to vote against SOPA and similar bills.In the meantime, not everyone is happy with this move – for instance, a coalition of right-of-center outfits delivered their own version with various sets of principles, which included “humility” and “the rule of law” – the list includes TechFreedom, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the National Taxpayers Union. They argued that the original document contained an “ambiguity which could pave the way for more government intervention”.However, if you take a closer look on both versions of the document, you would notice that they both highlight the importance of free expression, privacy and innovation. The question is how to apply those ideas. In fact, the real issue is the ambiguity of the documents, a feature which may prove fatal to the outfits’ plans. In addition, the Congress doesn’t seem to be going to vote against free speech or creativity, but it is less likely to support vague principles.So, to make a change the initiators must have a good plan focused on the political sector. You can recall Demand Progress’ campaign, which emphasized that the MegaUpload case had set a precedent, and pointed out that now such portals like Gmail and Flickr might be in danger as well.Demand Progress also filed an amicus brief (with more than 50,000 signatures) with a Virginia judge who managed the MegaUpload case. The matter is that solving the cyberlocker’s problem (and other troubles that may appear soon) would demand the legislation be modified, especially the 2008’s PRO-IP Act, because it enables federal government to seize domains, servers, and everything else they may need in a copyright violation case.

Advertising Sustains Online Piracy

Search giant Google, in co-operation with PRS for Music, has carried out a study titled “The 6 Business Models For Copyright Infringement”. So, what did they find out?

The report revealed that a key source of revenues for the services “believed by the largest copyright owners to be massively facilitating copyright violation” is advertising. However, this will surely start a heated debate instead of calming things down.

The study was based on a research made by Detica and the information offered by the Premier League, FACT, UKIE and The Publishers Associations. The report classifies piracy portals into six groups: live TV gateways, embedded streaming, peer-to-peer groups, music transaction, subscription groups, and rewarded freemium.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of interesting discoveries about the music sector. One of them emphasizes the importance of advertising (funding 86% of P2P community portals). Another one reveals the importance of search engines for music transaction services, which means that their users usually find out about the portal through a search engine.

The study in question indicates that there are a lot of various business models for Internet infringement that can be tackled if the industries co-operate. The collected evidence suggests that one of the most efficient ways to do so is to follow the money, looking for those advertisers who prefer to earn money from such services and working with payment providers in order to make sure they realize how their services are used.

The head of the PRS for Music hopes the result of the study will reach the government of the United Kingdom and other countries. He says that the portals involved in copyright violation are mainly businesses with real costs and revenue sources, which receive subscription and advertising revenue. On the other hand, those services have to pay their server or hosting costs. The only problem is that they don’t pay the creators of the material on which their businesses depend.

As you can see, the business models of the copyright infringers are different, and the authorities now have the evidence to realize which policy levers they need to apply to solve the problem of piracy and deal with those strategies efficiently.

The Chinese Hacked Indian Navy Systems

According to the latest security reports, India has left contemplating its naval, as the Chinese hackers managed to take out the computer system on the National Navy’s Eastern Command.

The intruders managed to plant malware on the targeted system based near the city of Visakhaptnam. The malware in question sent sensitive information to specific IP addresses in China. Local media reported how the country’s first nuclear missile submarine, named INS Arihant, had been running trials at the facility and might have got the bug.

The malware was said to work the following way: it had created a hidden folder where it copied specific files and documents based on the keywords it had been programmed to identify. The folder remained hidden on the pen drives until those were put in the machines connected to the web. That’s when the bug silently sent the collected files to the specific IP addresses in China.

Thus far, it is unclear how much was stolen in the hacking raid. The experts also can’t say whether the malware in question operated like Stuxnet and needed to be installed within the system by a spook first. Meanwhile, India has already arrested six officers for procedural lapses that caused the breach. The authorities do not reveal whether any of the officers can later face spying charges.

The interesting part of the story is that the national navy stores sensitive information only in standalone machines that are never connected to the Internet. Moreover, these computers also can’t have any ports or access points to use flash drives or external storage devices. How the malware got into machines should be a mystery for the Indians…